John Stones' Paint Trophy

1. Rock Band 3

2. Gears of War

3. Skyrim

4. Super Mario Galaxy

5. Shadow Complex

6. Mass Effect 2

7. Bastion

8. Portal

9. Red Dead Redemption

10. The Walking Dead

11. Rayman Origins

12. Burnout Paradise

13. Metroid Prime 3

14. Geometry Wars 2

15. Uncharted 2

16. Saints Row: The Third

17. Journey

18. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

19. Mortal Kombat

20. Driver San Francisco

Straight off the top of my head and it's staying that way. It was hard to whittle down the list though. Not owning the handhelds from this generation doesn't help me make a complete list though.

Honourable Mentions:

Assassin's Creed 2

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Binary Domain

Condemned: Criminal Origins

Dark Souls

Dead Rising

Forza Horizon

Grand Theft Auto V

Infamous

Just Cause 2

Lost Odyssey

Limbo

N+

Nier

Papers Please

PixelJunk Shooter

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time

Red Faction: Guerrilla

Shadows of the Damned

Skate 3

Sleeping Dogs

Super Meat Boy

I guess 1-6 are my personal favourites and the things I've sunk the most time in. And in the case of Rock Band 3, money. So much money.

Just picked up the FFX/X-2 remaster and I forgot how fun the sphere grid and the character switching in battle are. They really knocked it out of the park with the CGI too; with the touch ups, some of it looks phenomenal, even by today's standards. Voice acting is still iffy but it has a funny kind of charm 12 years removed.

Debuchy to Arsenal confirmed. Canny player but he doesn't like defending much.

My Director of Football has signed Paul Konchesky and Jermaine Jenas... apparently.

Fair enough.

I love doing games where you let your DOF sign players for you. Though, it is frustrating when they sign Steven Fletcher for £9.5 million when you've already got 4 strikers and only 2 first-team centre halves. He actually built a good Wolves team for me to play around with on one save.

1. Sam Cooke

2. NIna Simone

3. Alex Chilton

4. Harry Nilsson

5. Paul McCartney

6. Steve Winwood

7. Otis Redding

8. Kate Bush

9. Arthur Lee

10. Elizabeth Fraser

First 10 that came to head within 20 seconds.

It definitely had his fingerprints all over it and if you don't like that sound, you're not going to like it applied to Dr. John. I liked it but it was all a bit "Dr John fronting the Black Keys with trumpets". As far as Dr. John musical collaborations go, it was absolutely nowhere near as good as his album with The Meters.

Now that the Rolling Stones have been announced as another one of the brilliant headliners for Roskilde Festival, maybe I should get around to listen to some other album than Sticky Fingers. Anybody have any recommendations, outside of Let It Bleed and Exile On Main St.? I am not at all familiar with their album discography, I only know the hits and the before-mentioned album.

Adding to what's been said, Some Girls is from 78 and very good but they probably won't play any of it live except maybe Beast of Burden.

Man City aren't prolific away from the Etihad. They'll more than likely win comfortably but hopefully it's a tight game.

Taylor is a liability and Pardew's "keep it tight no matter what" approach will see us sitting back for most of the game. I'd like to think we could give a similar kind of performance like Chelsea or Man United but Man City's movement is exactly the kind of thing we struggle against. There's a reason we haven't got a result against Man City since we came back up. I expect us to get one shot on target through an easily saved Santon effort from 20 yards.

I'm going to drink a pint for every goal Newcastle concede tomorrow. Can you pre-book ambulances?

I've enjoyed this season of Parks and Rec but I'm beginning to wonder if it's because I like seeing these characters interact more than the actual plots and scripts being any good. Tom remains pretty great though; I would absolutely buy his talking tissue dispenser for someone as a joke gift.

'Bring Me To Life' is pretty awful. On the list, Crazy in Love, Ignition and Sound of the Underground obliterate it as far as interesting, catchy and plain good pop singles go. 'Hey Ya' is the best pure pop single of the 2000s though, certainly.

In my attempt to listen to just about everything ever put to tape, I've started with 1990 and starting to hit the harder to find stuff now:

Sons of Kyuss S/T: Enjoyable enough but fairly bland playing. They'd improve a great deal with their next albums but the groove that fills the Desert Sessions and some QOTSA stuff is already in place.

Nick Lowe: Party of One: Pretty bad. Too many songs are 12-bars with very little interesting about them aside from bad vocal hooks. All worth it for "What's Shakin' on the Hill?" which could have sat alongside his finest songs. Slow ballad with perfect chord changes.

Adrian Belew: Young Lions: Bowie's Guitarist goes pop or as pop as he can be. The experimental stuff is hit and miss with 'Gunman' closing the album well enough. 'Young Lions' and 'Looking for a U.F.O.' are the standouts with him filtering The Beatles-style melodies through his own style. Bowie's vocals on 'Pretty Pink Rose' are particularly poor.

Everytime I see Dragon Age in game shops, the PS3 version is always cheaper than the 360. It's tempting to get it on the PS3 and save a few quid but is there anything bad that would explain the price drop?

I loved Dragon Age and had it on the PS3. I don't think there's much of a difference between it and the 360 version (though there's a bit of a frame rate issue if things get too hectic in DA on PS3, dunno about 360). Will is always saying that the PC version is the best, though I prefer a controller to a keyboard & my PC wouldn't be able to run it at full specs, but yeah, if you've got the PC to run it at full quality, might want to consider that version. Other than that though, there was nothing about the PS3 version that caused me to ever stop playing or get annoyed.

Ah right, thanks for that. I don't have the PC specs to run it so I guess I'll save myself a few quid and get it for the PS3.

I've not been to too many dreadful ones.

As much as I want to say Bob Dylan I can't, because he had an amazing setlist and just being there was enough to make up for everything else.

Em Little Boots live was incredibly shit. It's not helped any by the fact that I don't think her music is that great but the woman has one of the weakest singing voices I've ever heard.

Most of these would be bands that play at my union cause I usually go along to them no matter what because of free tickets. Quite a lot of them were awful though. Such as Seether, Madina Lake, Hollywood Undead.

Actually the worst gig I've ever been to is twin atlantic. No doubt about it.

Saw Twin Atlantic at The Other Rooms in Newcastle the other month and thought they were pretty good. They weren't helped by a crowd full of wankers but I expect that at any gig now.

Everytime I see Dragon Age in game shops, the PS3 version is always cheaper than the 360. It's tempting to get it on the PS3 and save a few quid but is there anything bad that would explain the price drop?

"All of This" by Shaimus was one of my favorite Guitar Hero 1 "who the hell is -- ooh this is fun" tracks. It tempts me, slightly.

It's still incredibly fun and the solo is still a bitch to get right (but still excellent to play). For a combined 160MSP, the Shaimus tracks are worth it since I've got both and enjoyed them a lot. I can tell they're going to be the type of song that pops up on a mystery setlist that makes you go "Oh, I've not played this in forever and it's still awesome"

Also, Lady Gaga 4-pack next week is the best DLC announcement since Queen.

Right I'm not just saying this because I fancy her or anything but Marina & the Diamonds album is like the best new album I've heard since like Midnight Organ Fight or something. Every song is instantly catchy but also has so much more to offer over repeated listens.

Are You Satisfied, Shampain, I Am Not A Robot, Mowgli's Road, Obsessions, Hollywood, Hermit the Frog and Oh No! are all phenomenal, while the other songs on the album are merely very good.

I'm really shocked by this because I was expecting the album to be good, but not this good - especially considering my favourite song of hers (Seventeen) isn't on the album.

Was expecting Frightened Rabbit's album to be my early contender as album of 2010 but it's been overtaken after less than a weak and I can't imagine anything else besting Marina. I do really like the new Frightened Rabbit but I've barely listened to it due to Family Jewels.

I hope I don't come across too gushy when I interview Marina soon.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it as well. Not to the point where I'd say it's beating out Joanna Newsom or anything but it's a very very good pop album indeed with some pretty neat production touches. It's pretty great to see someone I watched with about 30 other people become a big thing.

Out of curiosity, has anybody else checked out The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom?

In case you don't know, it's a basic puzzle platformers with a mechanic wherein you can create a clone of yourself and control them for a bit, then go back to the main character while your clone repeats the action you recorded (say, jumping up and down on a button to open a door). You have to collect a number of pies in each level to advance. What makes the game stand out is the presentation, looking like a silent movie and taking place in a black and white recreation of a 1920s city.

I played the demo today, and while the game mechanic is clever but nothing new, the presentation and style of the game are done amazingly well, and really make the game stand out from many other puzzle platformers out there today. I really really enjoyed the demo, and am definitely going to be downloading the full game very soon.

I'm just curious if anybody else has picked it up, and if so, what they thought of it.

I'm definitely considering picking it up; I've heard it described as a black and white Braid. How much truth is there to that? I'd try the trial but I'm without Live for a few days.

I really think Grimsby are screwed this season-they only stayed up last year because three teams got huge points deductions! They've looked dire for a long time now.

I'm hoping the Newcastle firesale continues in the next two weeks! Duff has gone, so who else is likely to follow him out of the door? Jonas? Enrique? Coloccini? Smith!? I don't really fancy going to St. James' Park and facing their current squad in October!

Why? It's shite. There'll be injuries by then and we'll be down to some lemonheads from the reserves. There's no depth at all and the likes of Nolan and Smith are fairly terrible anyway.

I have no interest in the Lego game because there's no way to transfer the songs

That hasn't been confirmed yet, as far as I know.

Sounds like a wank in the bath.

If the bath was filled with acid and you had razors for fingers.

If anyone sees a gazebo, maybe painted hot pink, with a ring of tents around it, just pop in and say Hi.

Fake Problems are playing the Uni? Cheers for that heads-up.

A ghost is obviously the most reasonable explanation. Not a shadow or anything.

I lost my entire digital collection a year ago; around 145gb or so. Barely recouped half of it since it's too much of a task to get them again. I'll probably never listen to some of the more obscure stuff again.